I was only fourteen.  The street along which I had to go was quite dark, the town lights being put out at two a.m., for reasons of thrift perhaps.  There was a high wind that cried in the trees.  My shoes on the board walks, here and there, sounded like the thuds of a giant.  I recall progressing in a shivery ghost-like sort of way, expecting at any step to encounter goblins of the most approved form, until finally the well-known outlines of the house of the doctor on the main street—­yellow, many-roomed, a wide porch in front—­came, because of a very small lamp in a very large glass case to one side of the door, into view.

Here I knocked, and then knocked more.  No reply.  I then made a still more forceful effort.  Finally, through one of the red glass panels which graced either side of the door I saw the lengthy figure of the doctor, arrayed in a long white nightshirt, and carrying a small glass hand-lamp, come into view at the head of the stairs.  His feet were in gray flannel slippers, and his whiskers stuck out most grotesquely.

“Wait!  Wait!” I heard him call.  “I’ll be there!  I’m coming!  Don’t make such a fuss!  It seems as though I never get a real good night’s rest any more.”

He came on, opened the door, and looked out.

“Well,” he demanded, a little fussily for him, “what’s the matter now?”

“Doctor,” I began, and proceeded to explain all my sister’s aches and pains, winding up by saying that my mother said “wouldn’t he please come at once?”

“Your mother!” he grumbled.  “What can I do if I do come down?  Not a thing.  Feel her pulse and tell her she’s all right!  That’s every bit I can do.  Your mother knows that as well as I do.  That disease has to run its course.”  He looked at me as though I were to blame, then added, “Calling me up this way at three in the morning!”

“But she’s in such pain, Doctor,” I complained.

“All right—­everybody has to have a little pain!  You can’t be sick without it.”

“I know,” I replied disconsolately, believing sincerely that my sister might die, “but she’s in such awful pain, Doctor.”

“Well, go on,” he replied, turning up the light.  “I know it’s all foolishness, but I’ll come.  You go back and tell your mother that I’ll be there in a little bit, but it’s all nonsense, nonsense.  She isn’t a bit sicker than I am right this minute, not a bit—­” and he closed the door and went upstairs.

To me this seemed just the least bit harsh for the doctor, although, as I reasoned afterwards, he was probably half-asleep and tired—­dragged out of his bed, possibly, once or twice before in the same night.  As I returned home I felt even more fearful, for once, as I was passing a woodshed which I could not see, a rooster suddenly flapped his wings and crowed—­a sound which caused me to leap all of nineteen feet Fahrenheit, sidewise.  Then, as I walked along a fence which later by day I saw had a comfortable resting board on top, two lambent golden eyes surveyed me out of inky darkness!  Great Hamlet’s father, how my heart sank!  Once more I leaped to the cloddy roadway and seizing a cobblestone or hunk of mud hurled it with all my might, and quite involuntarily.  Then I ran until I fell into a crossing ditch.  It was an amazing—­almost a tragic—­experience, then.